Radiating death

Money For Nothing

Imagine there's a country in the Middle East (let's call it country "I") that is immediately next door to another country that we could, for the sake of argument, refer to as country "P".

Imagine that for "security reasons", cancer doctors in country P cannot easily travel abroad for the training and networking that would keep their skills up to date; and that country I does not allow country P to import equipment that would provide radiation treatment to children with cancer, likewise for "security reasons".

So country P has to send its cancer patients to neighboring countries to receive advanced medical treatment. Country P pays for about five-sixths of its seriously-ill patients to be treated in country P's neighbors, Eg and Jo. Country P pays country I to provide medical treatment to the remaining one-sixth, even though the travel restrictions that country I imposes on the residents of country P means that they are sometimes reduced to carrying their desperately ill children to hospital on their backs, cross country.

Imagine that country I pockets the money that country P pays it for cancer treatment, but when country P's child cancer patients arrive for treatment in country I, country I's doctors treat them cursorily with obsolete medical equipment that they no longer use to treat country I's own children with cancer.

Of course, the children from country P die.

When confronted, the doctors from country I blame the children's parents, saying that country P is a country of "fourth-rate" doctors and its parents shouldn't expect their children to receive first-rate medical care.

And then read Toxic Treatment and discover that it's not your imagination at all, but there really is a country I that takes money from a country P, and in return provides substandard treatment to children with cancer. And the children with cancer are real too. Two of them are Farah Jamal Harma (aged 10), and Hayah Azam Abu-Qabatya (12), and they're dead.

But remember: if doctors in Israel deliberately create a separate medical channel for Palestinians, which systematically gives them inferior treatment for life-threatening illnesses, you mustn't call this kind of system "apartheid", because that's "anti-semitic".